Surgical Patients Admitted to Intensive Care: Do Elective and Urgent Surgical Patients Have Similar Outcomes?

BACKGROUND: The landscape of critical care is evolving. Advances in treatment and supportive care, along with the evolving technology supporting surgical interventions, such as robotics, have made it possible to achieve outstanding results. Contemporary evaluation of prognosis in critically ill surgical patients is paramount to support individualized care and informed decision-making. This study aimed to assess and compare short-term (first 30 days) and long-term (up to two years) outcomes of elective versus urgent surgical patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and to characterize their clinical trajectory patterns beyond the traditional grouping of "surgical patients." METHODS: We performed a post hoc analysis of the Critically Ill patients' mortality by age: Long-Term follow-up (CIMbA-LT) study, a retrospective, multicenter, observational study conducted on Portuguese multipurpose ICUs over four years. Surgical patients were segregated for further analysis. We compared differences between patients admitted after elective or urgent surgery. RESULTS: We included 13,748 surgical adult patients admitted to an ICU during the study period. Roughly one-third underwent elective procedures and two-thirds urgent surgery. Patients submitted to an urgent procedure presented higher severity and in-hospital mortality (24.6% versus 8.2%, p